Social innovation, rural tourism and social enterprises. Evidences from the South-Southeast Mexico

This article aims to discuss aspects related to the formation of social enterprises as cooperative societies of tourist services and integrated by inhabitants organized on the community basis and of ejidal assembly in the south of Mexico. In the search for alternatives for economic and social development in Mexico, the creation and development of companies is considered a strategic task. However, the process faces constraints that call into question some operational logics. Data collection and processing was carried out from the perspective of qualitative research with resources from the ethnographic method. The units of analysis were four groups formed as social enterprises whose members the ejidal assembly assigns per year and that are integrated into the normative structure of the community under the name of cooperative societies in the municipalities of Tzimol, La Trinitaria and Las Margaritas, Chiapas. Evidence was found that the mechanisms for implementing participatory projects based on community-based cooperative enterprises contradict rural development principles and that external actors assume a large number of tasks required for projects to be consolidated through autonomy and permanence in time. The business management process requires a perspective that considers graduality and intergenerationality in the processes of social innovation for rural development.